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What’s the furthest a recipient will be forced to travel? How many offices per population area? What’s the current rate of calls and direct deposit modification

What’s the furthest a recipient will be forced to travel? How many offices per population area? What’s the current rate of calls and direct deposit modifications? At that rate what load will it put on the offices? How long is the average interaction? What will the throughput be if the current office staffing?

orionsbelt 2y ago
[flagged]
- hypothesis 2y ago
  > they just need to find a local young person that is willing to help them handle the requirements online Is that an officially published guidance? Because it sounds awfully close to “social security/ballot harvesting” and will surely backfire on those old people.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
Like onerous voting regulations, the goal is to disenfranchise.
- orionsbelt 2y ago
  Do you not believe their statement that there is $100M of fraud? If you do believe it, do you think it is worth fixing?
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    I don’t believe one thing they say, as almost everything they’ve put forth has been a lie or exaggeration. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-contracts-wall.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-con... | https://archive.is/2025.03.08-181114/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-contracts-wall.html https://archive.is/2025.03.08-181114/https://www.nytimes.com... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121408
  - drweevil 2y ago
    Read the following contradiction and tell me they are not trying to disenfranchise: > Retiree advocates warn that the change will negatively impact older Americans in rural areas, including those with disabilities, mobility limitations, those who live far from SSA offices and have limited internet access. > The plan also comes as the agency plans to shutter dozens of Social Security offices throughout the country and has already laid out plans to lay off thousands of workers. This isn’t a good-faith effort to save $100M. It’s nefarious.
    - orionsbelt 2y ago
      The ID verification changes are limited to the following scenarios: 1. To complete the final identity verification step when initially applying for benefits. This happens only once in a person's life. 2. If one wants to change which bank account their payment gets direct deposited to. This should happen very rarely for someone that is elderly, has mobility limitations, etc. Perhaps once or never. In addition, the identify verification can be done online in a modern way, very easily. A $100M estimate for current fraud is well within the realm of reason and is supported by trend lines from prior Biden-era publications. The people you are worried about "disenfranchising" are therefore the following set: someone who has nobody close to them that could assist them with a basic website sign-up and ID verification online application, who cannot figure it out themselves, and who cannot travel somewhere in person for whatever reason. What other institution - other than the federal government - would willingly allow $100M of fraud to occur to avoid inconveniencing the above group? I acknowledge this policy may harm some people, but so does $100M of fraud, which is only getting worse every year.
      - clipsy 2y ago
        > I acknowledge this policy may harm some people, but so does $100M of fraud, which is only getting worse every year. In other words: who cares if hundreds or thousands of people lose the entitlement they spent their entire lives paying into? It's much more important to eliminate fraudulent payouts that account for 0.006%[0] of social security's annual payouts! And when Trump pisses 1,000x as much away on tax cuts for the wealthy you won't say a word. [0]: https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/basicfact-alt.pdf https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/basicfact-alt.pdf
  - roxolotl 2y ago
    I mean… $100M of fraud is kind of a joke. Taking this statement at face value we’d be talking about a fraud rate of less than .01%. The US spent 1.3T on social security last year. A .01% loss rate would be absolutely remarkable and an incredible success given the massive benefits to society social security provides.
    - m463 2y ago
      It seems like it is fraud perpetrated against specific people who have their social security deposits redirected, instead of payments to fake people.
      - roxolotl 2y ago
        Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to say we shouldn’t attempt to mitigate fraud. I’m saying that when presented with a problem it is important to apply a cost benefit analysis to the solution. This problem is relatively small. The proposed solution is very heavy handed. That makes me question the rationality of the solution.
  - fzeroracer 2y ago
    Do you have any reason to believe in their statements? What happened to skepticism around whatever government officials tell you?
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  Ah yes most europe is disenfranchised
  - tzs 2y ago
    Are you referring to most of Europe requiring voter ID at the polls? If so that is not comparable to the US because in Europe they actually try to make it easy for people are are eligible to vote to actually get the required ID. In the US the states that have added stricter voting ID requirements have done things like: • Close the offices that issue ID in areas that tend to vote against the party that is imposing the ID requirement. • Reduce the hours that the remaining offices will issue ID, often meaning that to get an ID you have to visit in a middle of a weekday. For poorer people this can mean losing a whole day of work to try to get ID, and can be expensive because the states doing this tend to have poor public transit. These people are also more likely to vote for the other party. • Allow alternate forms of ID for people who don't have a driver's license. This should be a good thing, but when you look at what alternates are allowed you find things like a state issued hunting license is acceptable but a state issued student ID from a state university is not even though the hunting license and the student ID are both equally is reliable when it comes to showing identity. They say it is just coincidence that people with hunting licenses are far more likely to vote for the party imposing the ID requirements and people with student IDs are far more likely to vote for the other party. In addition it can cost $100 or more to get the documents needed to get the ID, which is a significant expense to many less well off people (especially added to the lost wages in states where they have to miss work to get the ID). If they proposed voter ID laws that included funding to help people get IDs so that the above problems went away most of the opposition would go away. But they never do because the point is not to prevent the fraud that they say is happening (but can never find any evidence for). It is to make it hard for people who vote the wrong way to vote. Further evidence that is the real goal can be seen by looking at the other things they are doing, such as reducing the number of polling places in areas that vote the wrong way so that there will be long lines. That discourages people from voting in those areas. They also have made laws criminalizing providing food or water to people in those lines making it even harder for people to stick it out until they can vote. Another trick is to go through the registration list and purge people for whom there is some doubt about their continuing eligibility to vote. Normally that's a good thing and is a normal part of a well fun election system, but it can be turned into a disenfranchisement tactic by doing such a just before an election and not trying to notify the purged people so that they only find out when they actually try to vote. I'll give you one guess which party does most of the "just before the election" purges and which districts they are more likely to do them in. A purge that is not intended as a disenfranchisement tactic would occur in the years between elections and those purged would be sent notice so people would have plenty of time to reregister if they were still eligible. How many of the things described above are also done in Europe?
ADent 2y ago
I know there are overseas recipients - so possibly quite far.
Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
They are simultaneously cutting staff and closing offices while artificially increasing demand for both. I don't think this is being done in good faith.

orionsbelt 2y ago

[flagged]

hypothesis 2y ago
> they just need to find a local young person that is willing to help them handle the requirements online Is that an officially published guidance? Because it sounds awfully close to “social security/ballot harvesting” and will surely backfire on those old people.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

Like onerous voting regulations, the goal is to disenfranchise.

orionsbelt 2y ago
Do you not believe their statement that there is $100M of fraud? If you do believe it, do you think it is worth fixing?
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  I don’t believe one thing they say, as almost everything they’ve put forth has been a lie or exaggeration. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-contracts-wall.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-con... | https://archive.is/2025.03.08-181114/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-contracts-wall.html https://archive.is/2025.03.08-181114/https://www.nytimes.com... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121408
- drweevil 2y ago
  Read the following contradiction and tell me they are not trying to disenfranchise: > Retiree advocates warn that the change will negatively impact older Americans in rural areas, including those with disabilities, mobility limitations, those who live far from SSA offices and have limited internet access. > The plan also comes as the agency plans to shutter dozens of Social Security offices throughout the country and has already laid out plans to lay off thousands of workers. This isn’t a good-faith effort to save $100M. It’s nefarious.
  - orionsbelt 2y ago
    The ID verification changes are limited to the following scenarios: 1. To complete the final identity verification step when initially applying for benefits. This happens only once in a person's life. 2. If one wants to change which bank account their payment gets direct deposited to. This should happen very rarely for someone that is elderly, has mobility limitations, etc. Perhaps once or never. In addition, the identify verification can be done online in a modern way, very easily. A $100M estimate for current fraud is well within the realm of reason and is supported by trend lines from prior Biden-era publications. The people you are worried about "disenfranchising" are therefore the following set: someone who has nobody close to them that could assist them with a basic website sign-up and ID verification online application, who cannot figure it out themselves, and who cannot travel somewhere in person for whatever reason. What other institution - other than the federal government - would willingly allow $100M of fraud to occur to avoid inconveniencing the above group? I acknowledge this policy may harm some people, but so does $100M of fraud, which is only getting worse every year.
    - clipsy 2y ago
      > I acknowledge this policy may harm some people, but so does $100M of fraud, which is only getting worse every year. In other words: who cares if hundreds or thousands of people lose the entitlement they spent their entire lives paying into? It's much more important to eliminate fraudulent payouts that account for 0.006%[0] of social security's annual payouts! And when Trump pisses 1,000x as much away on tax cuts for the wealthy you won't say a word. [0]: https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/basicfact-alt.pdf https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/basicfact-alt.pdf
- roxolotl 2y ago
  I mean… $100M of fraud is kind of a joke. Taking this statement at face value we’d be talking about a fraud rate of less than .01%. The US spent 1.3T on social security last year. A .01% loss rate would be absolutely remarkable and an incredible success given the massive benefits to society social security provides.
  - m463 2y ago
    It seems like it is fraud perpetrated against specific people who have their social security deposits redirected, instead of payments to fake people.
    - roxolotl 2y ago
      Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to say we shouldn’t attempt to mitigate fraud. I’m saying that when presented with a problem it is important to apply a cost benefit analysis to the solution. This problem is relatively small. The proposed solution is very heavy handed. That makes me question the rationality of the solution.
- fzeroracer 2y ago
  Do you have any reason to believe in their statements? What happened to skepticism around whatever government officials tell you?
dzhiurgis 2y ago
Ah yes most europe is disenfranchised
- tzs 2y ago
  Are you referring to most of Europe requiring voter ID at the polls? If so that is not comparable to the US because in Europe they actually try to make it easy for people are are eligible to vote to actually get the required ID. In the US the states that have added stricter voting ID requirements have done things like: • Close the offices that issue ID in areas that tend to vote against the party that is imposing the ID requirement. • Reduce the hours that the remaining offices will issue ID, often meaning that to get an ID you have to visit in a middle of a weekday. For poorer people this can mean losing a whole day of work to try to get ID, and can be expensive because the states doing this tend to have poor public transit. These people are also more likely to vote for the other party. • Allow alternate forms of ID for people who don't have a driver's license. This should be a good thing, but when you look at what alternates are allowed you find things like a state issued hunting license is acceptable but a state issued student ID from a state university is not even though the hunting license and the student ID are both equally is reliable when it comes to showing identity. They say it is just coincidence that people with hunting licenses are far more likely to vote for the party imposing the ID requirements and people with student IDs are far more likely to vote for the other party. In addition it can cost $100 or more to get the documents needed to get the ID, which is a significant expense to many less well off people (especially added to the lost wages in states where they have to miss work to get the ID). If they proposed voter ID laws that included funding to help people get IDs so that the above problems went away most of the opposition would go away. But they never do because the point is not to prevent the fraud that they say is happening (but can never find any evidence for). It is to make it hard for people who vote the wrong way to vote. Further evidence that is the real goal can be seen by looking at the other things they are doing, such as reducing the number of polling places in areas that vote the wrong way so that there will be long lines. That discourages people from voting in those areas. They also have made laws criminalizing providing food or water to people in those lines making it even harder for people to stick it out until they can vote. Another trick is to go through the registration list and purge people for whom there is some doubt about their continuing eligibility to vote. Normally that's a good thing and is a normal part of a well fun election system, but it can be turned into a disenfranchisement tactic by doing such a just before an election and not trying to notify the purged people so that they only find out when they actually try to vote. I'll give you one guess which party does most of the "just before the election" purges and which districts they are more likely to do them in. A purge that is not intended as a disenfranchisement tactic would occur in the years between elections and those purged would be sent notice so people would have plenty of time to reregister if they were still eligible. How many of the things described above are also done in Europe?

ADent 2y ago

I know there are overseas recipients - so possibly quite far.

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago

They are simultaneously cutting staff and closing offices while artificially increasing demand for both. I don't think this is being done in good faith.